1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to configuring a stimulating medical device to a recipient and, more particularly, to the automatic measurement of neural response concurrent with psychophysics measurement of stimulating device recipients.
2. Related Art
Determining the response of an auditory nerve to stimulation has been addressed with limited success in conventional systems. Typically, following the surgical implantation of a prosthetic hearing implant, the implant is customized to conform to the specific recipient's needs. This process of configuring an implanted hearing prosthesis for a particular recipient is commonly referred to as “fitting” the implant to the recipient. This fitting process involves the collection and determination of recipient-specific parameters such as threshold levels (T levels) and comfort levels (C levels) for each stimulation channel using psychophysics. This collection of patient-specific parameters, including the T and C levels for plurality of stimulation channels, is commonly referred to as a MAP.
Essentially, a clinician performs psychophysics measurements by applying stimulation pulses for each channel and subjectively interpreting a behavioral indication from the implant recipient as to the threshold and comfort levels of the perceived sound. For implants with a large number of stimulation channels this process is quite time consuming and rather subjective as it relies heavily on the recipient's subjective impression of the stimulation rather than an objective measurement. Also, the psychophysics approach is further limited in the cases of children, infants and prelingually or congenitally deaf recipients who are unable to provide an accurate impression of the resultant hearing sensation. Hence the fitting of the implant may be sub-optimal and may directly hamper the speech and hearing development of recipients.